Amersham residents will use more than £13,000 disposable face masks a day in 2021, new figures have suggested.

The number of single-use masks that will be used each day across the UK in 2021 has been calculated as 52 million, with 13,573 in Amersham, according to figures by waste company tradewaste.co.uk.

Spokesman Charlotte Green said: “The scale of the problem of carelessly dumped disposable face masks is massive.

“The residents of Amersham use 13,573 single use plastic masks a day and sadly some of these are being dropped, or simply fall from people’s pockets – sightings are increasingly common now.”

She said litter pickers across Amersham and the rest of the country are reporting an increasing number of masks being collected during their rounds.

There are fears many of these are being blown away into woods or rivers and causing a potential hazard for wildlife.

Ms Green added: “Used masks are not only a littering issue, but also a health and safety one.The way to tackle this potential environmental disaster is for everyone to move towards washablereusable masks.”

“Not only will this cut down on single use mask litter, but it also reduces the environmental impacts of manufacturing 19.5 billion plastic masks in the first place.

“As a country we have worked so hard to reduce plastic consumption, yet we are sleepwalking into another nightmare.”